Money and Justice Forum

The Texans for Fair Courts Network of which TPJ is a member, organized a successful November 21 forum at the University of Texas to explore the need and possibility for judicial selection reform in Texas. Below are links to news coverage and related resource materials.

Money and Justice: Is Texas Ripe for Judicial Reform? Texas Fair Courts Network policy paper.
Austin American-Statesman news coverage by Chuck Lindell.
Texas Needs Judicial Reform. November 29 editorial from the Austin American Statesman.
Texas Tribune interview with Bert Brandenburg and David Lyle.
YNN Capitol Tonight interview with TPJ Director Craig McDonald.
The New Politics of Judicial Elections. Latest report from Justice at Stake.
Justice at Risk. Report from the American Constitution Society.

Lobby Watch: Dark Money Texans Helped Utah's Rogue AG

Disgraced Utah Attorney General John Swallow resigned last week, as a state probe found evidence that he deliberately failed to disclose unsavory business transactions mandated by state election law. Texas operative Jason Smith, who used dark-money attacks to help install Swallow in 2012, has since gone to work for Barry Smitherman's Texas Attorney General campaign.
Read the details in Lobby Watch.

Lobby Watch: Toomey Firm Lobbies for Company Seeking Perry Handout

AAA Auto Club--which is seeking a taxpayer handout from Governor Perry--is headed by a Perry pal and patron...whose lobby firm is headed by Perry's former chief of staff and ex-roommate. Texas' crony capitalist state has become so inbred that Lobby Watch can no longer tell whose sitting in the driver's seat. Read the new Lobby Watch.

Lobby Watch: Dewhurst Gave Favored Senators a Fundraising Boost

Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst announced senate committee chair assignments in late 2012--months earlier than usual. The early announcement allowed the anointed chairs (including one now gunning for Dewhurst's job) to grab special-interest money before the start of the fundraising blackout for the 2013 legislative session.

Lobby Watch parses fundraising differences between senate chairs and non-chairs both before and after Dewhurst's announcement.

TPJ Welcomes Abbott's Proposed Ethics Reforms

Attorney General Greg Abbott's ethics proposals are more thoughtful than any offered by Governor Perry over the past decade.

Read TPJ's analysis.
Link to Abbott's Ethics Reform Proposals.

Lobby Watch: Is the Water Fund New Perry Slush Fund?

Donors Tied to Water PAC Gave Governor $7 Million Since 2009.

Lobby Watch analyzes the $2.1 million Texas Water PAC, which is urging voters to embrace Prop. 6. Most of the money came either from thirsty energy interests or from a construction industry hungry for dam contracts. Donors affiliated with companies funding Texas Water PAC gave Perry $6.8 million since 2009.

When Texas lawmakers proposed Tuesday's constitutional amendment to invest $2 billion in water projects, they fired the board that would oversee that money. Rick Perry has since appointed three loyalists to control all that cash.

Read details in the new Lobby Watch.

Lobby Watch: Texas Taxpayers Gave $1.8 Million to Obamacare IT Firm

A year after Obamacare’s birth, a fierce critic of the program inadvertently helped sabotage it by awarding $1.8 million in Texas taxpayer funds to subsidize Montreal-based CGI Group. This technology firm incubated by Governor Perry was the lead contractor producing the bug-infested software that crippled Obamacare’s rollout.

Read the details in the new Lobby Watch.

TPJ Ethics Complaint Asks "Where Did Private-Prison Money Go?"

Texans for Public Justice filed a formal complaint today urging state ethics officials to determine what became of the $6,000 that a state prison contractor’s PAC reported giving last year to two state legislators: Sen. Troy Fraser and Rep. Harvey Hilderbran.

UPDATE: Responding to TPJ's Texas Ethics Commission complaint, a spokesman for Harvey Hilderbran's campaign told TPJ that the campaign immediately returned the $1,000 check it received from GEO Group PAC without accepting or cashing it.  An attorney for Troy Fraser told TPJ on November 4, 2013 that GEO PAC destroyed its $5,000 check to Fraser before delivering it.  The GEO Group did not disclose that the Hilderbran and Fraser checks were never accepted.

TPJ has subsequently (on Oct. 28, 2013) filed a complaint against GEO Group PAC for apparently failing to report the return of the Hilderbran contribution.

Read the full media release.
Read the GEO Group PAC complaint,  the Fraser complaint and the Hilderbran complaint.

Lobby Watch: Owner of Rogue Dating Service Wooed Texas Pols

Attorney General Greg Abbott recently sued Internet dating site True.com to stop it from selling personal data on millions of members. True.com owner Herb Vest of Dallas has long paid Austin politicians to aid his companies. Vest's personal orientation favors politically powerful GOP men. And his personal profile further suggests a kinky fetish for hiring the governor's ex-subordinates to be his lobbyists. 

The latest Lobby Watch outs who Herb Vest has been doing in Austin.

Lobby Watch: Pariah PAC Money That Even Politicians Won't Touch!

Texas' money-hungry politicians return negligible political funds. An analysis of money returned to jilted PACs finds that almost all of it comes from business PACs. These pariah PACs are overwhelmingly concentrated in industries that are controversial, heavily regulated or reliant upon government contracts.

TPJ Unmasks the Pariah PACs in Lobby Watch.